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Clinton Walker

Clinton Walker is an art school dropout and recovering rock critic, a Sydney writer the Sun-Herald has called "our best chronicler of Australian grass-roots culture."

Since starting out in student newspapers and his own punk fanzines in Brisbane in 1977, he's published nine books, worked extensively in television, written millions of words as a journalist, produced and/or annotated a score of anthology CDs and been record-shop jockey, a DJ, and even a cook to the stars! After his first book Inner City Sound was published in 1981, Walker spent the rest of the decade on the freelance treadmill, as a star contributor to Australia’s two leading rock rags, RAM and Rolling Stone, and to all the leading local newspapers and magazines. His hillbilly-grunge band the Killer Sheep got run out of the Tamworth Country Music Festival in 1987, before posthumously releasing the single 'Wild Down Home' on Au-Go-Go Records in 1988.

Pulling back from journalism, he wrote four books in the 1990s, including Highway to Hell (his acclaimed, best-selling biography of Bon Scott), Stranded and Buried Country (a history of Aboriginal C&W). Going into the 2000s he moved into television, working on the film version of Buried Country plus, for the ABC, a number of programs, including the hit rockumentary series Long Way to the Top, the late-night live music show Studio 22, and Rare Grooves; plus he produced their soundtrack albums.

More recently, he's written more books outside music topics, but forged a relationship with US publisher Verse Chorus Press to keep in print for the world Highway to Hell and Inner City Sound. In 2012, he published History is Made at Night, a polemic in defense of Australia's besieged live music circuit, and in 2014, VCP will publish a new updated edition of Buried Country, plus its all-new companion piece or sister volume, Walker's tenth book, and first graphic history, Deadly Woman Blues, about the great black ladies of Australian music.